Robert Indiana’s Hartley Elegies (1989–94) is a series of 18 paintings inspired by Marsden Hartley’s War Motif series, which Hartley executed as a tribute to the young German soldier Karl von Freyburg, who died during World War I and with whom Hartley had a deep friendship. Indiana employed Hartley’s stylized visual language throughout the Elegies, while reinvesting them with additional content and meaning. Particularly notable in KvF V is Indiana’s incorporation of the phrase “Truth, Friendship, Love” in a ring also bearing Hartley and von Freyburg’s names. The phrase is a slight variation on the motto of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, “Friendship, Love, and Truth.” The emphasis on truth, by placing it at the front of the phrase, can be read as an insistence on bringing the true nature of Hartley and von Freyburg’s relationship to light, instead of hiding it behind coded symbols. By choosing the motto of the Odd Fellows Indiana also directly linked himself to the two men, as his Vinalhaven residence, the Star of Hope, had once been an Odd Fellows hall.
